Last Resort
by Yamitron
Summary: Marik's very best friend is being possessed by the god of darkness, and hellbent on killing him. This is his Last Resort.


Marik Ishtar was standing at the railing on a second floor balcony at a motel that can only be described as a shit hole. He didn't want to be there, of course. In fact, right now he was badly wishing he could go back to his house, grab some strawberries, and put on a movie in his bed or something. Something normal. Something relaxing he could do in the comfort of his own home. But he couldn't do that. He was stuck in the shit hole Motel 6 at the edge of Domino, looking down into the 'pool' below him, which he very seriously thought had a corpse floating in the deep end. He sighed and let his eyes wander to the horizon in which the sun was setting. Another day, gone.

He had been staying at this motel for two weeks, and been on the run for three. As the pangs from his shoulder and stomach reminded him, he was still not healed up, either. The dagger from which he had been stabbed was a powerful thing. Not to mention his broken arm. He needed a refill on his pain medicine. Masochist though he may be, constant throbbing pain from a blade going all the way through your breast plate, your opposite arm being broken at the radius and ulna, and piercing your side at an odd angle, grazing one of your kidneys and causing internal bleeding was something he was not want to put up with.

And why was he so extensively hurt? His best friend in the entire world. Marik had only two friends left. His hikari had committed suicide a few months earlier. His friend who was so close to him she was like his sister was an ex-prostitute with twin baby boys, and was currently living with her fiancé and rarely saw him. So his closest friend, the one with whom he spent many a bored afternoon and shift at the bar in which they worked, was Bakura. They acted like they hated each other sometimes – playfully shoving or squirting in the face with a squirt-bottle – but the two of them had what could be classified as a 'bromance'. They loved each other, enjoyed each other's company, looked out for the other.

Until three weeks ago, that is.

Three weeks ago, Bakura had opened up the door to his soul, willingly or unwillingly, Marik was unsure. What he was sure of, was what was once his best friend, was now a vessel for Zorc himself. His smirk and once soft brown eyes were gone, replaced by a murderous grin and piercing red eyes which glinted whenever Marik glared at him. Bakura had given up the job designated to him – to get the Millennium Items back and kill the pharaoh – and thusly, Zorc found it necessary to use him to the utmost degree to get them. Marik was so extensively hurt because he not only refused to give up the Millennium Rod, but he was part of the reason Bakura was no longer looking for them.

Bakura was very close to his hikari, married to a woman he fell in love with, and best friends with Marik. The lack of drive came about slowly, overriding his hate with guilt and even love after awhile. Having a life like this, he no longer wanted to go out in search of items. His hatred was behind him. Or so he thought. One day, Zorc must have been stewing in the back of his mind, watching him, and decided enough was enough. Ryou and Kisara did not have Millennium items. As such, Marik, being 1/3rd of the reason why Bakura abandoned his quest and the only holder of a Millennium Item in the vicinity of Domino anymore, was his first target.

The wind tussled Marik's hair as he sighed, wondering just how he was going to get food for himself that night. He would probably go hungry again. He had no idea where the possessed Bakura was, and he didn't want to risk being stabbed from behind as he quickly made his way to a vending machine or any place that sold food. This was his third day without food, and it was taking its toll. He didn't know how much longer he could go on like this.

He frowned, wanting to take his mind off of these unpleasant topics, and remember the good times. He thought back to working at the bar with Bakura, goofing off, calling each other names. He had always had several jokes with Bakura. One of which is that he was secretly Lois Lane (because as he was not Batman nor Spiderman, that was the default option) and always affectionately referred to him as 'Lois'. He also joked that, as Bakura was a grump over half the time, there was a large stick shoved way up his ass, that he boasted was his personal doing. His lips twitched as he thought back to working with him and goofing with him, feeling a touch of sadness in the reminiscence.

"_Oi, Bakura, did you do a stock check?" He asked, putting on his apron and tying it behind him sloppily. He was late. Again._

_Bakura groaned. "Eh. No. I keep forgetting that's done here. I can go do it."_

"_Nah." Marik rolled his eyes. "I keep telling you, that's my job. I just hate doing it." He grinned and lightly nudged him as he grabbed the clipboard with the checklist of what they were supposed to have stoked in the back._

_Bakura snorted. "Welcome to the rest of the world, Marik." He shook his head with a smirk and took the order of a customer, while Marik grinned and went to check their supplies._

_He returned soon after to find Bakura grumbling to himself and aggressively wiping up a spill with a rag. "What did you do now, Lois."_

_He was met with a distasteful look and a jerk of the head towards the door. "That guy wanted a martini. So I made him one. I went to hand it to him and he grabbed my wrist and licked my bloody palm. I kicked him out. __Idiots.__"_

_Marik couldn't keep it back and burst out laughing. "Seriously? Someone __licked your palm?__ That's fuckin' hysterical!" He continued laughing, as Bakura glared at him._

"_It's not funny!" He smacked him upside the head, and Marik's laughter quieted to sniggers behind a hand. Bakura huffed. "Why do I always get the nutcases…"_

"_Because I've worked here longer and know better than to serve them~" Marik grinned, soon laughing after being smacked again._

"_I wasn't __just__ talking about the customers." He rolled his eyes, going back to wiping with his rag._

"_Oi! I take offense to that!" Marik folded his arms, pretending to sulk._

"_Good. You should." Bakura looked over to him with the utmost in serious expressions, not suggesting any manner of joking. But Marik knew better._

_Like the mature adult he was, Marik reached for their bottle of carbonated water, and squirted Bakura with it. He spluttered as his hair and face got covered in the stuff, his hands immediately flying to his face to wipe it off. "__Marik!__" _

_Marik only laughed and threw a rag at him. "Clean up, Lois, you look a __mess.__"_

_He continued laughing even as Bakura smacked him yet again, and went on a mini-rant about how childish he was…_

A light smirk was touching his lips as he thought of this, a familiar scene of an average day with his friend. The smirk faded as he was brought back to reality. This was what was real. The constant hiding. The fear of being murdered in his bed. The ever-present worry for what was to become of his best friend… The very worst part of this was every time Marik saw him, really got a glimpse of him as he was ranting about how Marik was just a mistake, a flaw, an imperfection of the world needing to be eradiated he saw less and less of his friend and more and more of the dark god possessing him. It didn't look like he was fighting. It looked almost like he had given up. And that was the worst part of the whole ordeal. Not the stabbings, not the fleeing. The notion that his friend was not trying to fight back. Was not trying to save him. Was not trying to regain control of himself. Maybe those impulses to kill him were always there, just buried deeply within him.

An actual stabbing pain shocked through his chest as he thought of this. Maybe everything he knew about his best friend was a lie. Maybe he harboured hatred towards him and only put up with him to get closer to him in hopes of one day stealing the Rod. Every smirk was empty; every clap of the shoulder or snigger was forced. If he wasn't fighting… maybe this man hunting him down was a compilation of Zorc and Bakura. Not one or the other. Both fused together, filled with the visceral dripping hatred of wanting Marik cold, dead, and unmoving.

His throat tightened at this image. Bakura standing over him with a bloodied knife, licking his blood off of it as he himself lay motionless on the ground in a pool of the stuff, mutilated beyond recognition. He flashed back to the Bakura he knew, the one who would laugh and joke with him, get chocolate for him, put up with his teasing… A lump formed in his throat and he felt a stinging behind his eyes as he reached behind him for the object tucked behind his pants and under his shirt. If his friend wanted him dead, and was not fighting him anymore… he took out the small revolver and looked at it extremely sadly. Then maybe he should save himself, Kisara, and Ryou from all the trouble of running and hiding. No more games of hide and seek. This time… This time, when Bakura came, armed with a knife and poised to kill, Marik would save himself and save some strangers, too. If the Bakura he knew was dead… Then this Bakura needed to die, too.

Marik bit back the emotion that was quickly surfacing at the knowledge he was getting ready to kill his best friend and put the revolver back, concealed behind him. As he looked back to the horizon, now a very faint purple, almost the colour of his own eyes, he saw him. Speak of the Devil, and he shall appear. Bakura. Not even bothering to be discrete, striding quickly over to where he must know Marik was staying. Diabound behind him, a knife fisted in his hands, he seemed to be grinning with delight at having won their game of cat and mouse yet again.

Gritting his teeth, Marik cracked his knuckles and stepped back into the motel room. His heart started pounding in his chest. This was it. The final showdown, however cliché that was. Either he was going to kill his very best friend who meant the world to him, or he was going to let himself die. He was prepared either way. The Millennium Rod was safely hidden away where he knew Bakura would never find it. The Rod belonged to Malik. His dead hikari. He would _never_ let anyone get a hold of it. It was all he had left, if Bakura was gone. His sister-like friend didn't need him anymore, his hikari was dead, his best friend wanted to kill him. It was all or nothing.

At that moment when he set himself, the door burst open with presumably a hard kick. Marik turned to look over his shoulder. There stood a shadowy figure, face split in half with a Cheshire grin, eyes wild and burning scarlet. "Tag," he said, stepping into the small motel room. "You're it~"

Marik glared at him, turning fully around to face him, his arms crossed. "Hello again, Zorc. I see you found me."

"It's not like you're hard to find. I just had a few minor injuries to take care of." He hummed offhandedly, as conversational as could be. Marik hated him. "But now that's all taken care of, I do hope you've realized the error of your ways and decided to hand over the Rod. It would be a shame to defile everything you own in addition to killing you. Although, that does sound fun, maybe I'll do that anyway."

Marik growled. "You are never getting the Rod. I don't know who you are, or whom you think you are, but be you Bakura or be you Zorc, you are _never _coming near me again. This is the last time I will see you, one way, or the other." He said coolly, solidly, without a hint of the dryness of his throat or the weight in his stomach.

Bakura just laughed. "Give up so easily, don't you. Don't be so noble; it's not befitting you. You know as well as I do that you would give up anyone off of the street in order to save your own skin. But I think you do know that I'm not going to let you live. No, we passed that point long ago. You shouldn't even be alive. You were a mistake. A mistake made from a tortured boy who took his own life. He deserved it. And so do you. I know you must be searching for some reason to be here. And I'll tell you a secret. You have none. No reason to be here. I never liked you, you know that? You just had an item and I was biding my time. If you honestly thought we were friends, you're just kidding yourself."

Marik swallowed hard, not wanting to believe that. Bakura laughed. "Reluctant to believe me, are you? Well, maybe that's for the best. Who knows, I could be Bakura succumbing to the impulse to kill you that I've always had, just ignored until I could take your idiocy no longer. Or perhaps I am Zorc, possessing him, using him to my own means and mentally torturing you in the process. You'll never know, because you are going to die on this floor tonight. All that matters is the 'Lois,'" he spat the word out. "you know is gone. And he is not coming to save you. You are on your own, and you cannot win against me. We both know that. So why don't you get down on your knees like the groveling worm you are and beg for mercy before I slit your throat, mm? More fun that way~"

Marik clenched his hands into fists. "Shut. Up. Let's just get this over with so I can murder you and get on with my life."

There was a small flicker in Bakura's eyes, something that Marik could not place, gone as soon as it appeared. Bakura just grinned more widely and said nothing more, tightly fisting the knife and launching at Marik.

They fell to the ground, Marik's hand shooting up to grab the wrist of the knife holding hand, holding it in a bruisingly tight grip. His other hand was pushing hard against Bakura's chin to keep his head up and away from him. Bakura meanwhile was fighting hard to thrust that knife downward into him somehow, his other hand going to Marik's throat, pushing down and cutting off most of his air.

Marik choked, lifting a leg to knee him in the crotch. Bakura choked as well from the immense pain of it, even uttering a faint 'heh.. heh…!' as he struggled to fight past it. Marik shoved him away and backed up in a crouched position, his hand reaching behind him.

Before he could reach the gun, Bakura recovered enough to flash his burning eyes to Marik's hand and see him reaching for something. With a growl befitting a beast, he threw the knife at him, hitting him in the shin.

Marik cried out in pain for a moment, and it was just a moment that Bakura needed before he launched at him once more. Ripping the knife unceremoniously from his leg, he flashed a wild grin, holding it high over his head with intent to plunge it into his neck.

As he did, Marik instinctively drew back a fist and punched him in a hard uppercut. Bakura made a sound similar to 'erk-!' and before he could resume trying to stab him, Marik made another desperate punch to his stomach.

Blindly, Bakura sliced down as he doubled over, managing to cut Marik's quickly withdrawing hand on the underside of his forearm. Marik swore loudly, scrambling away again as Bakura shakily but quickly stood, eyes flashing to him and growling again, quickly making the decision and forcefully shoving Marik up against the nearby wall, his knife firmly pointed to his throat.

"So," He panted lightly, once again grinning. "That was a rather pathetic fight, was it not? I really expected better than a kick to the bollocks and a few punches." Bakura taunted.

Marik looked away, squeezing his eyes shut as he slowly reached behind him again for that gun, movements imperceptibly slow.

"Look at me." Bakura demanded, grin slipping as he glared, fully focused on Marik's face.

"No." He responded, gritting his teeth and refusing to do so, his hand sliding slowly under his shirt. "I don't want to see you."

Bakura barked out a laugh. "Why not. In denial? Don't want to look at the real me before you die? Stop living in a world of fancy, Marik, and face the real world. **Look at me.**"

As Marik withdrew the gun from his pants, he bit his lip. "I don't want to look at you… because I want to remember you as my Bakura. Not this Bakura. This Bakura is filth and I never want to see him again. I want to remember my friend and the good times we had. Before all of this…" He sighed, lifting his head to look at him again, his eyes filled with hate, sadness, regret, and of course, pain.

Bakura's eye twitched at seeing this. "There were no good times. They were all lies. And you're an absolute imbecile for believing in them."

"Maybe that's true, maybe it's not…" Marik finally lifted the gun to point directly at Bakura's temple, cocking it. "But it's him I'm saying goodbye to."

In one instant, that same flash of something echoed in the scarlet eyes. One single heartbeat passed, and the knife plunged into Marik's neck at the same moment as he pulled the trigger.

Bakura gasped out as Marik cried out, both of them just twitching for a moment, before Bakura fell backwards in a crumpled heap on the floor and Marik dropped the gun, wrenching the knife out of his neck.

He wasn't moving. There was a pool of blood forming beneath him, and he wasn't moving. Marik bit his lip, ignoring his incredible pain and knelt down beside him, a hand shakily outstretching to brush the bangs aside from his still slightly open eyes. They were brown again. And almost… sad. A stinging suddenly arose behind Marik's eyes as he saw this. He had just murdered the closest human being to him.

Marik reached forward and as gently as he could shut the eyes of the dead man on the floor, letting the few tears spill over. He mourned for his friend when he saw the lack of fight within him. This was the last he had left now he saw it was true. He would never have him back. He was alone.

While he was evil, and he had killed many people, none of them ever meant anything to him, he thought as he stood once again, black touching the edges of his vision as he looked around the room. Was this what the families of those he had killed felt? Did he cause this level of grief in others for the last three years? Was this the level of emotion people were supposed to feel?

He sighed and slowly and carefully walked back over to pick up the gun and look it over. It shined innocently in the dull light of the Motel 6. He was losing blood, and fast. His vision continued to fade as he looked down at the crumpled heap that once was the man who meant the most to him.

He opened the barrel of the gun and frowned. One bullet left. Hm.


End file.
